


Cupboard Song

by Leyenn



Category: Beauty and the Beast (Disney) (1991)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Sing me a lullaby / sing me the alphabet / sing me a story I haven't heard yet</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Cupboard Song

He really had only slipped through the kitchen door to see if there might be any chance of a quick dusting before he had to waddle back up the staircase. Lumiere had picked out yet another room to try out - _'They cannot all have eyes, ze wardrobes, mon chere?'_ Well yes they could, _actually_, that had been the damn _point_ of the spell - and every time he seemed to have more stairs to climb. Maybe Lumiere was used to hopping up and down the place, but it was quite different with legs that wouldn't support a decently sized ant. And wooden legs at that. With no _knees_. Didn't that stupid candlestick realise -

And then Chip Potts, desperate to avoid bathtime as only twelve-year-old fine bone china could be, spotted him.

"Cogsworth! Cogsworth! Tell me a story!"

The cry was taken up by a dozen little china mouths, given accompaniment by the clink of thirteen little china feet hopping on the tiled floor. "Yeah, yeah, tell us a story!"

"Now look what you've done. They'll never get clean if you keep on chattering like that all night." It was rather frightening, how - well - frightening, it could be to have a flowered teapot scowling and hopping towards him with definite menace.

He opened his mouth to protest that he, himself, as it were, hadn't yet said a word. Then he remembered Mrs. Potts and the back end of her sweeping broom back in the old days, and thought better of that idea. "Ahem. Well, then." His arm-waving proved rather ineffectual, but he made the attempt. "Into the tub, all of you."

"Then will you tell us a story?"

"Hmm." He skipped away from the flowered scowl and watched them drop, one by one, edgily into the bubbles. He didn't really blame them; the thought of all that soapy water in his cogs and gears was positively itchy. "Well. Maybe."

Chip surfaced, blowing bubbles. "_Cogswooooorth!_"

Did he even know any stories?

Well, apart from that one.

Erm. Was he going red? He must be going red. And in front of the children. And if Mrs. Potts noticed!

Well, perhaps one wouldn't hurt.

"Um. Yes." Where to begin, if he wasn't to tell that story? "There was once a castle, and... and it was enchanted, you see."

What he saw were thirteen pairs of eyes giving him an unnerving amount of rapt attention. "Yes. An enchanted castle. And obviously it had people, well obviously it had people, what is a castle without people-"

"We've heard this one!"

"We've lived this one." Mrs. Potts gave him that look that suggested the front end of her broom directly to the door.

"Ah, but you see," he trawled his mind for a twist to the tale, "the prince in this story isn't our Prince. The prince in this story was a lovely young man-"

"_Ahem._"

"-not that our Prince isn't, of course, I mean, well, quite. It's just that this prince, well, he was... he was much, much older than our Prince. And not nearly so, ahem, um, handsome. That's right. But a delightful young man nonetheless. From very far away. And of course if we have a prince, then we must have a princess. So." Yes, that would do. "There was a young... princess, who lived in the castle, and her father was very strict."

Chip eyed him from behind the cloth-wrapped spout of a teapot. "Very very strict?"

He puffed out his chest a little, pleased at how suddenly well this was going. "Extremely."

"She had to go to bed early and _everything_?"

"Oh, she was made to go to bed before the sun even went down. And she had to eat vegetables with every meal."

The collective "Eeeww!" of thirteen squeaky-clean china voices shrilled at the time of the lungs almost made him jump.

"Ah, but you want the rest of the story? Well, our princess met a serving-boy, and fell in love with him, but her father was so outraged at the thought of her not wanting to marry the prince that he locked her in the tallest tower in the whole castle!"

This time the sound of response was a clinking rattle of china huddling together. Ah! He'd always known he was a minstrel at heart. "But then, that impudent little serving boy still refused to leave her alone. He would sit in the tower with her for days on end, not eating and always talking to her. Always, always talking, until her father became so enraged that he-"

"What, what? What did he do?"

"Did he lock up the serving-boy, too?"

"Did he do something _gruesome_?" This last said with no small amount of glee.

"Of course not." Mrs. Potts glared at him pointedly around the cupboard door. "Honestly, children these days. Into the cupboard, the lot of you."

"Do you want to know what he did?" Tiny flowered faces crowded at the very edge of the shelves, a rapt audience. This was just grand, he must come down and do this more often. "He turned them both into _things_! The princess became a little silver mantle-clock, with such fine little ivory hands," he'd always liked the idea of ivory hands, something about the lovely creamy feel, "and the serving-boy, well he'd always carried a candle in his pocket to light up her tower because it was so terribly dark, and so her father changed him into a-"

Oh, dear. Oops.

"A what? What was he, Cogsworth?"

"Um." He plastered a disarming grin onto his face. "Why, a candelabra, of course! With five arms," he added in a quick, bright voice. "Of course, the little mantle clock was appalled at the thought of loving a candelabra, and for many years she refused to have anything to do with him. But then-"

A spout stabbed him right under the winding key. "_No sordid details, Cogsworth!_"

"-ahem, um, er-"

Last as always, Chip bounced up onto his shelf, oblivious. "What? Then what?"

_Ah, childhood innocence._ "She, er - got over it. Not quickly, mind." _No, not quickly at all._ "But candles are by their nature warm-hearted, erm, things, and sometimes it got rather lonely to be a mantle-clock up on her mantle all by herself, and well, I mean, so-"

"Enough!" Then he did jump, and recalled to his sudden nervousness that in an enchanted castle, Mrs. Potts no longer actually needed hands to command a menacing sweeping broom. One that was at this very moment sweeping down on him with considerable menace. "Close that door and settle down, all of you, it's far past your bedtime."

The broom swept him onto the floor and dealt him a sharp rap around the casing, rattling his key in a very unsettling way. Not nearly as unsettling as the look he got from Mrs. Potts, sliding down its length from the dresser; oh dear, she seemed positively fuming.  
"You should be ashamed of yourself, keeping the children up with your little fantasies. The dusting cloths are beside the stove, now get one and be on with you!"

"Er, yes. Of course." That frivolous candlestick would be wanting to know where he was, anyway. "Hmph. Well then, a goodnight to you, Mrs. Potts." He glanced up at the cupboard. "Children."

Chip opened one sleepy eye at him through the glass. "Cogsworth, what happened to you and Lumiere?"

"We were scarred for life and lived happily ever after," he answered without thinking about it. "Now go to sleep."

  


*

  



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